Hagerty, Ssempa, Uganda, Auletta, Afghanistan and the whole damn social conservative mindset ...

(Above: go pixilate this).

In the end, and no matter how you slice and dice it, social conservatism is the problem.

And here at the pond, while we take (since we aspire to that talking tampon, Prince Charles', ideal of a royal inclusive) a generally light hearted view of the world, sometimes it's hard to take a benign view of the wretched activities of fundamentalist conservatives, especially when something like Barbara Bradley Hagerty's U. S. Church Lends Help To Anti-Gay Ugandan Pastor pops into the mail box.

After running through the activities of the regressive, reprehensible, hateful, sick and deviant Martin Ssempa, the pastor of the evangelical Makerere Community Church in Kampala, and his support of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, currently wending its way through the Ugandan legislature, Hagerty pops a question:

So why does Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas — a megachurch with some 6,000 congregants each week — financially support Ssempa?

Indeed. And she gets this answer:

Kevin Odor, the senior pastor there, says Ssempa has been "misrepresented."

"His heart is not to kill people," Odor says. "He is a pastor of the Gospel that believes in redemption and his heart is to redeem people."

Uh huh. Redemption, and if you can't be redeemed, off to prison with you. For life. Perhaps so you can experience the sexual lifestyle prison offers. Or hung. Now that's redemption with a vengeance ...

Odor says Canyon Ridge began supporting Ssempa's huge campus ministry, which preaches abstinence to college students, in 2007. Odor says he does not "personally" endorse the death penalty or life sentences for gay men and lesbians. Asked why he would support someone who does, he sighs.

"We want to help the AIDS problem in Africa, and we found somebody who is making a difference," he says. "So we support him."

Pathetic. And tragic. Making a difference! As Arnie himself might growl, some difference. Hasta la vista baby.

And then a little further down, within the hallowed halls of dull old NPR you can read this kind of comment:

It is an historical fact that evidence of homosexuality did not exist prior to Prophet Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, so the act itself (homosexuality) is not a condition that people are born with. It is a lifestyle choice, therefore, it is clearly a deviant behavior that some would like to make us think is beyond one's control. Give me a break, and now people are "horrified" because someone wants to take a stand against deviant behavior. If someone engages in criminal conduct we are outraged, why do people use a different lens when a behavioral choice is made? People are not born "gay", it is a choice, just like criminal behavior. One may be predisposed to a cetain lifestyle, but one is not forced to chose such behavior, and can be legitimately given consequences for engaging in such things.Some segments of society have been allowed to modify our understanding of behavior and make it acceptable. Not long ago, the DSM identified homosexuality as deviant, now its classified differently. I wonder why.

You'd have to hope it was a troll, sending up Christians, but the reality is, this kind of gibberish has been doing the rounds for generations.

Scratch a conservative Christian, and it's just like scratching a conservative Muslim to get the same old 78 revolutions a minute, shellac and hide bound attitudes included for free.

We were reading - since the royal we never fails to impress - Ken Auletta's piece in The New Yorker, Afghanistan's first media mogul in The New Yorker the other day - hard copy, covered in the detritus of blackberry jam and crumbs - and you can too, thanks to The New Yorker's most un-Chairman Rupert policy of making some of its content available online.

And the same reprehensible conservative crap was at the heart of the darkness in his story, and it slowly dawned on me yet again that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Here's a few quotes, and see if you can spot a trend, as Auletta charts the rise of a media mogul in Afghanistan, Saad Mohseni, with an Australian background what's more:

Mohseni had spent more than half his life outside Afghanistan, and Western popular culture had shaped his taste. In Tolo’s early days, he launched “Hop,” an MTV-like music program, with female v.j.s sometimes shedding their head scarves, and videos featuring gyrating women. The spokesman for the country’s Supreme Court proclaimed, “Watching a woman with half-naked breasts and a man and a woman sucking each other’s lips on TV, like on Tolo, is not acceptable.” The chief justice warned that “Hop” would “corrupt our society . . . take our people away from Islam and destroy our country.” Shakeb Isaar, a popular music-video presenter, was physically and verbally assaulted; ultimately, he fled to Sweden, where he had been granted asylum.

Uh huh. Remind you of Miranda the Devine and the Catholic commentariat scribbling about the death of civil society and the effects of screen culture and the internet? Or for that matter Stephen Conroy twittering on about his desire to censor the world?

Mohseni insisted, “If the public uses these programs with enthusiasm and they are popular, then obviously the public seems to be ready for these types of programs.” He now says, “One can be accused of being arrogant, of imposing something alien. From time to time, we would make the mistake of doing that.” But, he says, “I grew up listening to women on the radio. I don’t think it was alien. I think the Taliban period is an aberration in terms of our culture and history.”

Women on the radio! Think of that. We no longer have to imagine our radio commentators as old white males in dinner suits reading the news.

Well there's no point in purloining all of Auletta's work through quotations. His insights into the conservative mindset are as usual are revealing, and revolve around attempts by Mosheni to screen Bollywood soaps to Afghanistan viewers, and government attempts to get them taken off:

Though the soaps were not nearly as steamy as those produced in Latin America or the U.S., women did not wear veils and sometimes exposed their waists, unrelated men and women appeared together, and characters referred to the Hindu faith. The Ulema Council, which advises the federal government on proper Islamic behavior, condemned the soaps as un-Islamic, and the parliament voted to ban them. In April, 2008, the minister for information and culture, Abdul Karim Khurram, told Tolo and its competitors to take them off the air. Several stations eventually complied, but Tolo refused. “I just feel there’s no need to kowtow to the religious establishment,” Mohseni says. “I wanted a station that would appeal to all sects.”

Khurram told me Mohseni said to him at the time that “if I would not disagree with his programs he would have some programs that favor me.” Mohseni disputes this: “It’s bullshit. I did offer to work with him and his ministry on what was acceptable and unacceptable,” but the Minister was unreceptive. Khurram said that he told Mohseni, “The way you make money has harmed society. The parents complained to me that in these days when there are only a few hours of electricity, when the TV comes on the children don’t study. They watch TV.” For his part, Mohseni warned of “the re-Talibanization” of the country, and insisted that the Minister’s order violated the free-speech clause in the Afghan constitution.

Uh huh. And people sometimes wonder why here at the pond we warn - in a talking tampon royal 'we' kind of way - against the re-Conroynization of the intertubes. The end result of the conservative mindset at work?

The attorney general, Abdul Jabar Sabet, brought criminal charges against the offending TV networks. Mohseni challenged the charges in court, while adopting what he describes as a “rope-a-dope strategy,” granting small concessions in the hope of winning the fight. He made sure that Tolo electronically obscured bare midriffs, shoulders, and cleavage. Although he found it ridiculous to think that a glimpse of Hindu idols would entice Muslims to convert, he pixellated those as well.

Ah, for the nostalgia of I Dream of Jeannie, and the dangerous pixilated midriff.

Nevertheless, Sabet continued to prosecute. Later in 2008, Mohseni paid a visit to President Karzai. He believed that the President was stalled, unwilling to offend either fundamentalists or the millions of constituents who watched the programs nightly. When he arrived at the Presidential Palace, Mohseni recalls, Karzai displayed irritation about the controversy, and immediately asked, “What about the soap operas? They are not in accordance with our traditions.”

Mohseni responded, “Mr. President, if this show brings a smile to millions of Afghan faces on a nightly basis, what right does the government have to take away those moments of joy from the people?”

Karzai just “brushed it aside,” Mohseni says. He was offended by Karzai’s unwillingness to challenge fundamentalists. “We know when to step back and compromise,” he says. “But we will not compromise principles.” This spring, the government and the Ulema Council relented and dropped the charges.

Which is why an uncensored media is the only place to start in changing the predominant cultural mindset. There'll always be conservatives, outraged and upset by this, that and the other, including any kind of sexuality, hetero or homo, that runs against what is in "accordance with traditions", aka nonsense scribbled long ago by men in long beards making out like bandits as they pretended to have an inside run on the thoughts of the absent god.

And worse, being obsessives, as well as compulsive, it's hard to keep the buggers under control and in a box where they belong. Meet Afghanistan's answer to Stephen Conroy:

Khurram, who was replaced in December as information and culture minister, remains resolutely opposed to Tolo’s programming. He is forty-seven, short and round, with a black beard flecked with gray. When we met, he was wearing a black pin-striped suit jacket over a light-colored shalwar kameez, and clutching two cell phones, a common practice in Kabul, where cell-phone networks are unreliable. “Channels like Tolo are showing programs that are against Afghanistan culture,” he said. “They are deceiving Westerners that they are working for democracy and freedom in Afghanistan, while they harm democracy and freedom.” He said that, by showing “half-naked women,” Tolo “gives a false picture” of Afghanistan. “They say this is democracy and freedom. We don’t want it. For example, in these soap operas a woman who has three husbands is against Afghan culture. People don’t like it.”

Sob, you're right. It's not a direct link between him and Conroy. That bit would match up so much more nicely if we could read Conroy, who was replaced in September as the minister for censoring the intertubes ...

Never mind. Why, then, do so many Afghans watch the shows?

“First of all, only a small number of people watch these soap operas in Kabul,” Khurram said. “And they are not all Afghans. Some people have come to my office and told me that these soap operas are like drugs. We know it’s harmful for our families. Teachers have come to me to complain. You don’t see any art in these soap operas. . . . You are making people ignorant. This is cultural dumping.” Khurram thinks that too many TV channels in Afghanistan are supported by foreign money—from the U.S., Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. “Every country has a TV station here,” he said. “They realize that the media is more effective than guns and tanks.”

Oh dear, I see I'm quoting a little too much Auletta. A couple of wrap up quotes to establish the conservative mind set in all its glory:

Khurram’s TV watching, he said, consists of “good movies, but unfortunately there are not many.” He also watches news and public-affairs programs and listens to “good music,” especially classical music, on the radio. He has three children. “I try to warn them to watch good things,” he said. “They don’t watch soap operas. They watch cartoons. They watch programs on animals and historical films and Koran soap operas from Dubai.” I asked if he ever watched the Indian soap operas, and he said proudly that never once had he watched an entire episode. But, he said, “I have followed some of the scenes.” ...

The former Minister has supporters, even in the media. Masood Farivar is the Harvard-educated general manager of Salam Watandar radio, an NPR-like network that supplies programming to forty-two local Afghan radio stations; all are partially funded by U.S.A.I.D. ....

... For Farivar, the debate would start this way: “In a religiously conservative society, when you see multiple marriages and children born out of wedlock, do you want your children exposed to that kind of thing? For Afghans, respect for your elders is an important barrier. When your children are exposed to children just lying around when parents walk in, the children can imitate that. That’s not something we want for our children.” Jokingly, he added, “Sometimes my wife calls me the Taliban!”

Yes indoody. The Taliban is all around us, beavering away, wanting to bind our desires in briars of their choosing and their making.

That's why in the end, the struggle against this kind of relentlessly oppressive conservative thinking is never ending, from fundamentalist Christian churches in the United States helping to persecute homosexuals in Uganda, and the government of Afghanistan wanting to become the Taliban in order to defeat the Taliban. And Conroy wanting to classify and censor billions of web pages ...

It's a funny old world, unless you happen to be a homosexual in Uganda or a woman or a free thinker in Afghanistan ...

Now why not give The New Yorker a go - they do a better job than Chairman Rupert, and a few sheckles will keep the likes of Auletta going around - and remember to wear that inner city latte sipper label with pride.

It might involve pretensions and follies, but it doesn't usually involve an inclination to imprison and murder people for their sexuality, or stop them from enjoying what nature has gifted them - the endless fun and joy and pleasure of human sexuality, and its re-enactment and ritual celebration on screens around the world - even if some deluded souls think nature takes the form of their strangely long absent god ...

And now, since we're celebrating The New Yorker and sex, are you up to the challenge of their Cartoon I.Q. Test? Conservative commentariat columnists are specifically barred from taking part, since a perverse sense of humour is a prerequisite ...